As a miniature enthusiast you most likely know CoolMiniOrNot.com. I don't attach much value to the scores given there but it's still the number one place to find the best miniatures on the web.

From time to time I will make a post where I link to some of my favorite submissions on CMON. I won't directly link to the images, because I hate when that happens to my stuff to, so I will post the CMON links here.

To start off, there are some entries that caught my attention the past few months:

Since the release of the 5th edition rulebook of Warhammer 40.000 became imminent, my best friend and I decided to pick the game back up. We used to play (well, at least a few games :) it a few years ago, but the lack of decent scenery and a good army building strategy made us abandon 40k pretty quickly. I painted a small army of Black Templars and some Tau back then, but sold them on eBay.

So now I'm back at it and choose Space Marines again: Ultramarines this time. I'm not really painting up bulk amounts of soldiers, just small batches to fill up the time between commissions and when I don't feel like painting showcase quality stuff. Another advantage is I get some more practice on terrain building. We're building quite a large table, with ruins, craters, etc. Probably more on this in the next few months when it's worth showing off here.

When I started reading this tutorial on painting Helle Möller by Thomas David I thought this was just another ordinary step-by-step guide. But when I scrolled down I noticed the special type of basecoat Thomas used... He started out with a black primer, and then used his airbrush to spray on a layer of dark gray, then two layers of khaki and finally a layer of khaki mixed with white. He held his airbrush above the model, pointing down to achieve a natural looking shade on the model.So far so good... I've seen numerous people doing this with black and white primer. But I was really amazed how easy it was to paint the skin: Thomas used several glazes of skin color, followed by one was of ink. And check out the final result of the skin on this picture.

For those of you who don't know: the game Alkemy is produced by a French company called Kraken Editions. It's a fairly new game, right now there are four starter sets available (one for each race in the game) and the third expansion wave has just been released. The company is made up out of a number of very talented French people, including some ex-Rackham employees. I've seen the official studio miniatures last year at Painting Crusade V in Brussels and I was very impressed with the overal quality of the product.

I never painted these figures before, but recently a customer asked me to paint the Jade Triad start box. The studio paintjob looks like this (click to enlarge):

I was asked to paint the warband in a similar fashion to the studio paintjob, but to mix in some jade color where appropriate. In my opinion the 'official' color scheme looked a bit to monotonous with all the beige, light brown and skin tones. So I decided to break everything up by painting the cloth around their waists in jade.

Here's what I have done so far (click to enlarge):

I just started working on the dark brown areas, the beige and jade, together is basically done, together with the skintones. You might notice the monkey-like figure on the far right: this model wasn't included in the starter set, but it was some kind of limited edition figure which the customer also wanted to have painted.

I'm not a real fan of the figures themselves, but I love painting them. The only point of critique towards Kraken Editions is the type of resin they used for the figures. This is so soft that blades and poles easily bend when touched, not really acceptable for gaming figures in my opinion. There were also quite a lot of mold lines in difficult places.

If you would like to have some of your miniatures painted by me, that is perfectly possible: I'm available for commission work. It doesn't matter if you want 10 Warmachine troopers painter, or a single 40K Ork Warboss, everything is welcome. I have more than 5 years of experience in the field of commissioned miniature painting, and I painted for people all around the globe, all kinds of armies and miniatures, all kinds of quality levels.

In the past I always provide my customers with a list of quality levels and approximate prizing. I've decided not to work with such a list here, because the complexity of miniatures is so different nowadays that fixing a price for a given quality level is extremely difficult. Complexity is measured by two things: the number of surfaces that have to be painted in a different color (for example a space marine with an entirely red armor versus an ork with armor, exposed skin and two types of clothing) and the required assembly (one part plastics versus multi-part metal miniatures that require pinning).

So the best way to get to know the price for the stuff you want to have painted is to contact me through gerrie.schenck@gmail.com. This is the information I require:

The brand and type of miniatures.

The total amount of figures.

The desired quality level (more on this later).

The type of basing you want.

Do I have to buy the miniatures for you?

If you provide me with the miniatures, what state are they in (new in box, already assembled and primed, ...).

The most decisive factor in the price of the finished miniature(s) is of course the quality level of the painting. What's the kind of miniatures you want painted and what are you going to use them for? A rank and file soldier could have enough with just a basic paint job: a basecoat, some shading and one or two highlights. Miniatures that could benefit from a higher quality paintjob are unit leaders or figures which fight in smaller group (typically in skirmish games). Here more attention will be paid to the paintjob, two layers of shading is quite common, and also two or three highlights will be applied. Still want a better quality paintjob? No problem, the only limit is the amount you want to spend on the figure(s) and of course your own imagination. Another factor that is important is the type of base you want: is some painted sand with static grass enough or do you want to put the model on a large base? Everything is possible.

Assembly is usually quite straightforward: all mold lines are cleaned, the model is assembled (using pinning where necessary) and any gaps are filled. After that the model is put on its base and primed using a high quality model primer. After the painting is done the base is finished and the miniature receives multiple layers of matte varnish.

Payment is done using PayPal (cash and bank transfer is available for Belgian customers). When I have to buy the miniatures for you I ask some money up front to cover the cost of the miniatures and also a bit of the final price as a guarantee. Shipping is done using Belgium national post service. Your items will be securely packed and shipped when all payments have been received. If you want some more information about shipping costs then please include that question in your price quote.

If you have any questions, require more information about a certain subject or of course for price quotes: please contact me by mailing to gerrie.schenck@gmail.com. Thank you!

Two weeks ago I decided to close down the Pendragon Studios website... I have various reasons for this, but the main one is probably that I have lost interest with the concept of the site. The team I had built around me was also quite inactive in the miniature painting field for the last year (including myself) and of course the site hosting and domain name costs some money. It was a hard decision for me, since I had turned 'Pendragon Studios' in some sort of brand name for quality painted miniatures, gaining some recognition on the field of miniature painting. Eventually the domain name will end early October 2008.

But I decided this shouldn't bring an end to my miniature painting activities on the WWW. A wide range of free services (including this site, Blogger) makes it easy to bring everything I am doing online. Over the years personal homepages have evolved into more blogging type of sites. Pendragon Studios also had a news page, but I always kept the messages short and formal. When I was thinking about what to do after the end of Pendragon Studios I was brought back to my very first miniature related activity on the web: the original Corvus Miniatures, founded in July 2003. Although the original link was called corvusminiatures.cjb.net, I advise you to follow this link, because the free cjb.net forwarding service will display some annoying and dangerous (mallware) advertisements.

The original Corvus Miniatures was started after I got involved in the CoolMiniOrNot website, which is still an important place on the web for miniature enthusiasts. I was very active on the forums at that time and got to know a lot of people from the online community. My site also allowed me to get a taste of commission painting and selling painted miniatures on eBay. Outside of the web my painting skills were increasing rapidly. I started to compete in painting competitions, and even won some of them.

The hobby became more serious: more commission work kept coming in and the competitions got harder. Because of this I wanted a new, more professional looking site. In 2004 I met Jasper Posson, an talented painter and great a person overall. Together with him I kicked off Pendragon Studios later that year. We worked together for commissions and competitions, some highlights included our showcase at Miniaturansichten 2005, Jasper's silver demon at the German Games Day 2006 and my best of show award at the Golden Spur Painting Competition 2007. In the meantime the Pendragon Studios website was reworked and the team was expanded with two more painters.

But like I said at the beginning of this post I lost interest with the concept of Pendragon Studios, each of the painters went their own way and I got tired of updating the site, making promotion, etc.

I get a very nostalgic feel when I think back about the original Corvus Miniatures and the starting days of Pendragon Studios... Because of that I decided to dig up the concept of my first site again: corvusminiatures.blogspot.com was born!

With a similar color-scheme this will be my new home on the web. I still don't know what I want do with this site (apart from blogging about my painting activities) but expect a small gallery, a collection of links and of course some info on how to get miniatures painted by me. But the first priority will be to create a logo and properly set up the layout of this page.

This post has come to an end, and I am asking every Pendragon Studios fan and miniature enthusiast to bookmark this site and come again very soon, because this really is the start of something new!